China-Taiwan talks pave way for leaders to meet

China correspondent for Fairfax Media

Beijing: Chinese and Taiwanese officials have held their highest-level meetings since the end of China’s civil war in 1949, in what could pave the way for the first meeting between Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping later this year.

Though sensitive political issues including a formal peace treaty and China's demarcation of an air defence identification zone in the East China Sea remained off the agenda, the talks between Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Minister Wang Yu-chi and the head of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, Zhang Zhijun, marked a big step towards expanding cross-strait dialogue beyond economic and trade issues.

“Before today’s meeting, it was hard to imagine that cross-strait relations could get to this point,” Mr Wang said after the meeting in Nanjing on Tuesday.

The momentum and goodwill from both sides is also seen to have increased the likelihood of a meeting between Mr Ma and Mr Xi at an APEC summit in Beijing later this year, though Mr Wang said this was not specifically raised during the talks.

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Chinese President Xi Jinping said in October that both sides could not continue their political disagreements forever. “The two sides must reach a final resolution, step by step, and these issues cannot be passed on from generation to generation,” he said.

China considers Taiwan a breakaway province and part of its territory, and has reacted angrily in the past to steps seen as moving the self-governed island towards formal independence. Cross-strait relations plumbed new depths under the presidency of Chen Shui-bian, the then leader of the independent-leaning Democratic Progressive Party, between 2000 and 2008.

Since the election of Mr Ma six years ago, his administration has favoured closer ties with the mainland, and Beijing has taken a more conciliatory approach. However, Mr Ma’s popularity in Taiwan has plummeted since his re-election in 2012, and he is widely seen as struggling to reignite a stagnating economy and failing to keep cost of living in check.

Mr Ma’s Kuomingtang government is facing heavy losses in local mayoral and country magistrate elections later this year, often a firm predictor of presidential elections – due in 2016. Analysts in Taiwan say Mr Ma is aggressively courting the mainland to demonstrate that his government is best-placed to continue to improve cross-strait relations, and therefore bolster its economy, but has risked conceding too much to Beijing.

“They’ve gained face, but lost in substantive policy areas,” Titus Chen, a research fellow at the National Chengchi University in Taipei said, pointing out that its negotiations to participate in two Asian trade blocs, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) were reliant on China’s support.

The choice of Nanjing as the venue for the meeting was symbolic, given it was at times the capital of Chiang Kai-shek's Republic of China before his nationalist Kuomintang government fled to Taiwan after being defeated by Mao Zedong's Communist forces.

Mr Wang on Wednesday also visited Sun Yat-sen's mausoleum in Nanjing, a founding father of modern China and a figure revered in both Taiwan and mainland China.